What Should Be Shredded
A professional paper shredding program can help you be in compliance with the various State and Federal Laws. These laws mandate that you protect the private information of your employees, customers and patients. In order to be compliant with the various state and federal laws and protect yourself, stockholders, employees, and customers/patients, you should destroy all confidential and outdated material.
- Shred any document, which contains confidential material (designs, proposals, plans, and drafts of such information.)
- Shred any document which could be used for the purpose of identity theft (social security numbers, customer lists, credit applications, tax returns, etc).
- Shred any document which could cause harm in the hands of criminals or competitors (canceled checks, price lists, business plans, credit card numbers)
- Shred any document which is mandated to be protected by privacy laws such as HIPAA (health care), GLB (financial) or FACTA (general).
- Shred any papers which could cause harm to you or others in the hands of criminals.
Click here to see many examples of documents which should be routinely shredded.
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Advertising Misprints |
Customer Account Lists |
Organization Charts |
Always destroy any product, packaging or other physical object which could cause harm to your business, your employees, your customers, or the general public. The following are some examples of items other than paper, which should be destroyed.
ELECTRONIC MEDIA
Computer Disks, Compact Disks (CD's), DVDs, computer tapes, circuit boards and other like items need to be destroyed. Most fax machines, copiers and scanners are equiped with disk drives. Be sure to remove disk drives from those devices for destruction too.
EMPTY PACKAGING
It was discovered that thieves were stealing the empty and outdated product packages, which had been discarded for various reasons. The thieves filled the packages with inferior product and sold the packages at a flea market. This caused both lost sales and a significant deterioration in the value of the brand name. In more than one case, it was suspected that company employees knew the empty packaging was thrown in the garbage and they took it.
RECALLED PRODUCTS
If an item is recalled for safety reasons, the item should be destroyed. Thieves can retrieve the recalled products and sell them on the black market or at flea markets. Once in the market again, the manufacturer could again be liable for the safety of the product. Many recalled products look perfectly normal and in many cases, there is a significant part of the population that is unaware of the recall. That is why these products must be destroyed.
OUT OF DATE PRODUCTS
Out of date products that are thrown in the trash can come back to haunt you! These items can also be retrieved by dumpster divers and sold on the black market or at flea markets. Keep in mind that all your employees and many of your subcontractors and service providers, vendors know when these items are thrown away and any one of them could be or know a thief.
SECURITY MATERIALS
Uniforms (including private security guard, police, fire, public safety employees), as well as identification badges should be shredded.